Issues in African Film: The Artist and the Revolution: "Interview with Ousmane Sembene"

Translator: Moustapha DiopThis interview took place in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, February 1974This interview has not been published before Framework 61-2

(2020)

Tahar Cheriaa:

Ousmane Sembene, you have just completed shooting for your fourth feature-length film, Xala, adapted from the novel of the same name. Can you at least tell me about it, since at the moment you can't show it to me?

Ousmane Sembene:

Not "K'sala" but "'Hala!" You have to pronounce "xala" with the Arabic "khâ," as in "Khalifa." Etymologically, the Wolof word xala means "temporary sexual impotence." We are navigating a different "cultural time-zone" here, even though we, you from the Maghreb and I from Sub-Saharan Africa, stand in geographical proximity. You see, xala can befall any man, rich or poor. It can result from an aggressive feeling like jealousy or rivalry; it can ward off a perversion, etc. In ordinary Wolof xala also means the bow used to shoot arrows. Now the male reproductive organ, when at ease, is always bent, exactly like a bow, and like a bow it can be extended, "deployed" for a specific operation, before recoiling to its original state of repose. Hence the meaning of the word, from a cultural standpoint: temporary sexual impotence, meaning only "male" impotence, so it's sort of an erectile dysfunction. To have the xala amounts to holding your "bow" at ease. Of course, if it happens at the wrong time, in the wrong place, it can be very embarrassing. This is a first datum, of a cultural kind, a linguistic datum, if you want. But there is nothing pornographic or sleazy about my film. The sexual component is only a springboard to launch into a sustained meditation on contemporary Senegalese society and the vexed issue of its radical liberation.

TC:

Could you be more specific?

The African Bourgeoisie

OS:

In Senegal, as elsewhere, we have a socio-economic group or, rather, a privileged segment of society that emerges, gains prominence, and seeks to fashion itself in the image of the European bourgeoisie. In spite of the massive efforts expended in its mimetic pursuit, this fraction of society, this African bourgeoisie, is afflicted with the xala.

TC:

You mean it suffers from impotence?

OS:

Right. Cultural, political, economic impotence. If you take into consideration how the origins of life itself are culturally coded for such a society, then you understand better my use of this loaded term, xala, the sexual meanings and reality it registers in Wolof culture. The point is, this impotence is transient, it will come to pass, because it specifically targets the African bourgeoisie, a dregfilled flotsam and jetsam that, in spite of appearances, should not be conflated with the deeper undercurrents of history. The latter, in their natural movement, expel these toxic elements, but in their drift they also carry these sediments, inexorably, toward the hard rock of "unexpected hardships" where awaits a slow agony, death by a thousand cuts, as it were, and not the brutal, bloody kind of death, with dismembered body parts all over the place…

TC:

So the film deals with the impotence of this pampered African bourgeoisie, an impotence that, if I get your point, is pervasive and irreversible, since your claim is that it affects all three levels, cultural, economic, and political. At the same time, you say it is temporary, or transient. … Plus, this privileged class owns most, if not all, of the available wealth; its members, highly educated, can also boast of their own experience of struggle against all odds, starting from the bottom and rising to the top. Today this class holds the reins of power, at last, and so to speak, to counter what you just said, this African bourgeoisie has "all the guns and all the gold"; so how come its impotence is only temporary?

OS:

Okay, let's come back to the Wolof one-word parable, the xala. The man stricken with it can exhibit all the outward signs of power: massive, robust body frame, feline gaze, royal attire, and what have...